What are SEO factors in re-doing a website?
-
Most of my work now involves converting older websites to CMS-based sites (in Wordpress) and I'm wondering about best practices here.
If I create a "dev" or "sandbox" directory for my development work how do I keep the pages from being indexed while I am working on the new site? Can I "noindex" a directory?
What do I do with the old html files when the new site goes live? I'm assuming I will do a 301 redirect from domain.com/index.html to the new domain.com/, and also on all of the inner pages that have equivalent pages in the new site. But there will be a lot of old files left that have no equal in the new site. Do I just delete these, or noindex nofollw them?
-
Sorry. I just noticed that my link in my earlier response was broken.
Here is the correct links http://bit.ly/feg8co
-
Thanks. It looks like an excellent resource!
Bill
-
Thanks for your response.
In this case I am not changing the domain name, but converting the site from html/css to Wordpress. Many of the url names will stay the same, but they won't be .html files anymore.
-
Make sure you follow the steps as listed on https://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=83105&hl=en.
Proper 301 direction, new sitemap upload, change of address notification and retaining your old domain for atleast a year will make your transitions smooth.
-
_But there will be a lot of old files left that have no equal in the new site. Do I just delete these, or noindex nofollw them? _
If any of the old pages left benind have" Page Rank" ascribed to them, you might consider creating "catch all" pages on the new site so as to be able to 301 the leftover old to the new "catch all" pages and thereby reatain the link juice.
This requires creativity as you don't want to lose usability just to catch more link juice. Not knowing your exact situation I'm not positive this is an option but mention it just incase.
-
There are tons of other issues to think about - I would suggest to make a research on that topix on that blog http://yoast.com/cat/seo/ - there you will find answers to several issues you should think about.
-
Ooops I meant plugin - Wordpress Plugin
@SEOmoz - maybe an edit feature would come in handy - the same as available in the blog comments!?
-
Thank you Thomas,
I don't quite understand what you mean by "use a Wordpress login to do a quick and dirty redirect"
Bill
-
Hi Bill,
In your new CMS, you can use this meta tag until you are ready to launch:
In regard to the old pages, 301 them to either the home page or the most relevant subpages. If there are MANY subpages, you can use a Wordpress login to do a quick and dirty redirect of all the URLs that don't occur in the CMS.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
SEO Problems with Loading to a Subfolder?
A client has a single page app website that shows https://example.com/example when you visit https://example.com . I don't think this is a redirect; I think it's a URL rewrite. My questions: Is this setup common with single page apps? What are the SEO benefits or drawbacks of having a domain's homepage load, rewrite, or redirect to a subfolder?
Technical SEO | | Kevin_P0 -
Duplicate content on charity website
Hi Mozers, We are working on a website for a UK charity – they are a hospice and have two distinct brands, one for their adult services and another for their children’s services. They currently have two different websites which have a large number of pages that contain identical text. We spoke with them and agreed that it would be better to combine the websites under one URL – that way a number of the duplicate pages could be reduced as they are relevant to both brands. What seamed like a good idea initially is beginning to not look so good now. We had planned to use CSS to load different style sheets for each brand – depending on the referring URL (adult / Child) the page would display the appropriate branding. This will will work well up to a point. What we can’t work out is how to style the page if it is the initial landing page – the brands are quite different and we need to get this right. It is not such an issue for the management type pages (board of trustees etc) as they govern both identities. The issue is the donation, fundraising pages – they need to be found, and we are concerned that users will be confused if one of those pages is the initial landing page and they are served the wrong brand. We have thought of making one page the main page and using rel canonical on the other one, but that will affect its ability to be found in the search engines. Really not sure what the best way to move forward would be, any suggestions / guidance would be much appreciated. Thanks Fraser .
Technical SEO | | fraserhannah0 -
Why my website sudden gone down its ranking?
From today morning my site rank down in Google search engine http://watchwrestling.co/ Most of the pages are on the top rank of google but now it gone how can i fix that issue
Technical SEO | | watchwrestling0 -
Angular seo
Hi, how to do seo with angular ? is there an easy way to make google crawl your website healthy?
Technical SEO | | bigrat950 -
Google no longer is promoting my website!
My traffic just fell off the cliff and I can not figure out what has happened! Help!
Technical SEO | | PatriciaBeth0 -
Duplicate Title - Shopping Website
My website is showing with errors due to duplicate titles, these errors add up to over 150 errors. The problem is a lot of my products are similar, just in different lengths, colors etc. For example
Technical SEO | | adelemaree
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-short-australia-ugg-boots/48-classic-candy-short-australia-ugg-boots-blue.html
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-button-short-australia-ugg-boots/31-classic-candy-button-short-chocolate.html
http://www.ugg.org.au/en/classic-candy-button-short-australia-ugg-boots/28-classic-candy-button-short-black.html How can I avoid this error without having to merge all my products and colors into one page? As that would make my catalogue look too small! Thanks in advance0 -
Client with Very Very Bad Onsite SEO
So one of my clients has a really really bad website from the technical perspective. I am talking over 75k in violations and warnings. Granted, the tagging is done well but any other SEO violation you can think of is occurring. In any case, they are building a new website, and I am on a retainer for a couple hours a week to do some link building. I am feeling like I am not getting anywhere. What is your advice? Should I keep on keeping on or advice the client to put SEO on hold until the technical issues are resolved. I feel like all of this link building isn't having the value that it could have with a site like this.
Technical SEO | | runnerkik0 -
SEO Audit - Panda
I am looking for a reputable SEO company to help diagnose Panda issues. I am very familiar with SEO and lead an in-house team so I need more than a basic audit. e.g You need unique content
Technical SEO | | WEB-IRS
e.g. You need to create quality content I am looking for someone with a technical mind to help diagnose. Please reach if you have someone in mind.0